The Intelligence of Dogs

by

Dog intelligence is a topic which comes up quite
often, for example, in the
O.J. Simpson case where the only eyewitness to the murders of Nicole
Simpson and Ron Goldman was her dog Kato (later Satchmo).
Among the many bizzare points brought
up in the media frenzy was the question of interrogating this witness,
at which time it was noted that
the dog was an
Akita, a breed quite low on the canine intelligence hierarchy
(54th out of 79). In fact, in August 1994, the dog
was "interviewed" by Sergeant Donn Yarnall, chief trainer of
the Los Angeles Police Department K9 patrol. He described
the dog as having a "very nice disposition" but "inadequate
instincts or courage to protect his territory, owner or himself."
(Source:
The Run of his Life, by
Jeffrey Toobin, page 22.)

But where does this dog intelligence hierarchy come from?
A quick search reveals the source to be the book
The Intelligence of Dogs by psychologist and trainer
Stanley Coren. The resulting rankings are widely available, for
example
here
where dog owners will be either delighted or confounded by their pet's placing.
Either way, they will be interested in knowing how
dog intelligence was determined.

Adaptive Intelligence (learning and problem-solving ability). This is specific to the individual animal and is measured by canine IQ tests.

Instinctive Intelligence. This is specific to the individual animal and is measured by canine IQ tests.

Working/Obedience Intelligence. This is breed dependent.

According to this
review of the book
these tests mostly come down to the dog's ability to learn and obey commands.
It must be admitted that this measure has
validity in the sense that it can be measured objectively.
This will also come as a relief to perplexed owners of the low ranked
terriers, since they know that their
bright companions understand commands perfectly, but are just too stubborn
to obey them mindlessly. In fact, the book does raise this point:
Even though terriers are
extremely bright, they are bred to be independent and thus "do not care
about human responses to their behaviors" while dogs bred to work
with man like the herding dogs, do extremely well in obedience because of
the genetic wiring that compels them to look to their human owners for
direction. This excerpt from the book is taken from an excellent
summary and review
written by KrisHur on the newsgroup
rec.pets.dogs.behavior.

The rankings do give a first impression of accuracy, since the top
dog is the Border Collie, which everyone agrees is the smartest breed,
no matter how you figure it. However, it is my belief that most of the
list is completely meaningless because of the author's misguided
attempt to rank a large number of breeds. The large number of breeds tested
implies that the number of subjects in each breed would be rather
limited, invalidating any possibility of statistical significance of
the results. With 79 breeds represented, a sample of 100 dogs of each
breed would require many thousands of careful tests, which seems like
an improbably large number. Testing problems would be compounded
by the difficulty in locating a hundred dogs of the same breed with
owners willing to let them undergo a lengthy testing protocol.

As definitive proof of the shoddiness of the rankings, I note that
the
Norwich Terrier is listed in 38th position, while the
Norfolk Terrier is given in 56th position. As far as I can
tell, the only difference between these two breeds is the shape of
their ears. Moreover, the
American Kennel Club describes the Norfolk Terrier as being
one of the most intelligent terriers, whereas no such mention is made
for the Norwich Terrier.

Dumb & Dumber?

This obvious error is exactly where the rankings go wrong. With
insufficient data, it is impossible to make find statistically significant
differences between closely related breeds. On the contrary, my
anectodal experience suggests that a carefully done statistical
analysis would find no significant difference between breeds in the
same major groups, that is, hound, terrier, herding, etc.
In other words, I conjecture that the variation among individuals
in a single breed could be on the same order as differences
among breeds in the same major group. However, it is clear that
there are significant behavioural differences between the major
groups, which leads one to believe that Coren's results could have
some validity if limited to these more general classes of dog.

Well, I am not at all surprised to find such a glaring error
in this report of scientific findings. It is fairly well known
that research and pets do not make a good mix in academia, and
that doing research on pets can mean the termination of your career.
The upside of such research is that you can become a popular author
and even appear on television, as Stanley has, but even this has
been known to be damage one's academic reputation. For this reason,
Coren's study has remained unchallenged, and without serious criticism.

In conclusion, I believe that the dog intelligence ranking as it now stands
has little validity. On the other hand,
I also believe that there could be some merit to these results,
if the author revised his list by limiting the categories to the
major groups: hound, terrier, herding, etc., while making sure
that the sample sizes were large enough to ensure some statistical
significance.